Various hand-held cutting devices are known in the art including knives, cutters, letter-openers, and the like. For example, Design Pat. No. 329,584 depicts a hand-held letter-opener that has an elongated slot with an internally mounted blade for cutting. Design Pat. Nos. 329,798 and 333,773 depict similar letter-openers.
While such letter-openers are capable of cutting envelopes, and the like, such devices have various deficiencies and often they are not suitable to cut a wide range of materials. Materials being cut may be cut by the same small portion of the blade, which makes the device inoperable when this portion of the blade dulls.
For example, attempting to cut a substrate 190 such as cardboard with a letter-opener fails to cut the material, and the material merely ends up wedged in the end of the cutting slot. While some cutters with a similar configurations are operable to cut stronger materials such as cardboard or plastics, these same devices typically have difficulty cutting soft or weak materials such as paper.
Additionally, although scissors may have the ability to cut a wider range of materials, scissors nonetheless require substantially more dexterity and strength to create cuts. Specifically, a user must use several fingers to manipulate the scissor blades, manually select an appropriate cutting force, and must direct the scissors at the same time.
Moreover, scissors are inherently dangerous because they may include sharp points at the ends of the scissor blades, and the cutting region is open and exposed. The pointed scissor blades or the open cutting region may accidently puncture or cut a person or undesired substrates.